Rule 5: Stick Together
by Animegirl1129
Summary: In which Columbus wakes, dizzy and confused, in dark and deserted room in a dark and deserted house in a dark and deserted town in the middle of the desert. Rating for language, because it's Zombieland.


Rule 5: Stick Together

_**Written in response to cottoncandy_bingo prompt: desert. Haven't played in the Zombieland fandom in a while. Sort of pre-slashy, but could be gen if you don't perpetually wear slash goggles. Rated for canon-typical language and violence. Characters not mine, please enjoy! Comments are awesome.**_

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Columbus wakes, dizzy and confused, in dark and deserted room in a dark and deserted house in a dark and deserted town in the middle of the desert. Altogether, in the middle of the zombie apocalypse, it is arguably the worst place he ever could have found himself abandoned.

He sits up slowly, trying to ignore the way it makes his head pound in time with his too-fast heartbeat, and shivers when the blankets fall away.

Why is he cold? He's sure he remembers complaining about the broken air conditioning in the truck they'd driven here, remembers the too hot air on his too warm skin as they'd picked through houses looking for supplies under the high noon sun. More importantly, why is he alone? He remembers Tallahassee, too, bitching up a storm about the lack of decent supplies in any of these stupid, empty cookie cutter houses.

"Tallahassee?" He calls out, as loudly as he dares when he doesn't know if this place is clear.

He listens carefully.

Nothing.

"Tallahassee! Where'd you go!?"

He climbs slowly out of the bed he's been left in, and he has no idea why everything hurts, the type of bone deep ache he hasn't had to deal with since he had a persistent strain of the flu back in 10th grade. The old, wooden boards creaks under his feet, and he's careful of the shattered glass and the layer of miscellaneous debris that litters the floor. He has to catch himself on the doorframe as the world spins madly around him - as if it isn't already crazy enough, now it can't even do him the favor of staying right side up, ugh - and he starts to think that maybe moving was a bad idea.

If he can just make it to the couch, he'll be able to keep an eye outside, he tells himself, setting the goal as he forces himself to take another step, and then another. There's a pile of haphazardly stacked books on the floor, though, and he falls over them, landing awkwardly on his ankle.

"Fuck," he breathes, hands curling around it, where it's already starting to swell. "Just perfect, just what I needed. Now I'm completely useless." No wonder Tallahassee left him behind, he thinks, no wonder the girls ditched out last week. Why would anyone want to be stuck with him when he can't even manage to walk without fucking it up?

That line of thought makes him feel sick to his stomach, though, and he has to sit on the floor for a long, long moment trying not to give in to that feeling.

When he finally feels like he can maybe move again, he sets a new goal. Columbus drags himself back to his feet - well, foot - and stumbles-staggers his way back into the room he'd woken up in. It only has one boarded up window, and the single doorway makes it decently defensible. His best choice, for now. He collapses back onto the bed and feels more like he's just ran a mile than hobbled a few yards - a fact that does not bode well for rule number one of life in zombieland.

"Just... just for a minute," he tells himself, when he pulls the blankets back over his shaking body, eyes already falling closed.

When he wakes again, it is to the familiar, distant crash-bang-groan of zombies moving around outside. He shoots upright, trying to find the source of a sound that seems to come from all directions, but that's hard to do when everything is spinning again. He can make out the lumbering shadows of the undead passing by the window every few minutes, but it takes way too much effort and energy to keep tracking the slow, uncoordinated movements, and as it is, he can barely keep his eyes open.

But he has to.

He has to because for some reason he's alone.

He doesn't have rules for that anymore, doesn't know how to be alone when he's had other people for so long now. He's had Tallahassee nearly since the start, and Little Rock and Wichita have come and gone and come and gone and come and gone again, but now Florida is gone, too. And so he has no one.

"Tallahassee!" He shouts out, even though that is not the best idea with the walking dead so close outside the house. "Where the fuck did you go?" That comes out more as a delirious mumble, as he pulls the blankets tighter around himself, feeling cold and clammy and miserable. "W-where'd you go?"

"Argghhhhh!"

That terrifying noise is way too close, preceded by the sound of something heavy giving way under too much pressure. More boards breaking, a more coherent part of his mind suggests, as it tells him to stop laying there and _do something_.

Bleary, unfocused eyes settle on a broken piece of the headboard, sharp enough to serve as a weapon. It takes too long to pry it loose, though, and the first of the zombies that invaded the house are already shambling into the room.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he mumbles, trying to decide which one of the three identical zombies he sees is the real one because fucking fuck he is dizzy. He picks the one in the middle - because he feels like he's most likely to hit that one anyway - and surges forward. His jacked up ankle does not appreciate the move and nearly gives out under him, but he manages to drive the spike through the zombie's head. It lands, really dead, at his feet and the next one trips over the corpse, giving him the time to work out where to aim that blow, but that one breaks the makeshift stake into two equally useless pieces and now he's weaponless with three more shambling walkers closing in.

This would be the time to run, he thinks, except now is not the time for cardio, not when he can barely put any weight on his foot and he feels like he's fighting in zero gravity.

Two get stuck in the doorframe, trying to get through to him at once, but the third is mindlessly pushing into them and it's only a matter of time until they all come falling through the door, blocking his only exit and this... this might be it.

He's lasted this long, nearly a year of surviving in Zombieland and this is it.

The third one looks away from him just a second before it's head explodes in a shower of blood and brain and bone. The other two back off, change direction, and it's only a moment later that a gore0covered baseball bat takes first one and then the other out.

"Ya couldn't go a day without me before ya nearly go an' get yerself killed?"

Columbus collapses backwards, sliding down the side of the bed to sit on the floor because thank fucking god, it's Tallahassee. "Where the fuck were you?"

Tallahassee kicks and drags the corpses out of his way, climbs over the last two to get in the room and looks down at his very much not okay companion with something that almost looks like concern. "I went ta find some medicine for your sorry ass, spitfuck. After you started mumblin' crazy shit and passed out on me in the middle of checkin' this place, I thought it'd be safer to leave ya here. Definitely wasn't gonna leave ya in that hothouse of a truck." He reaches down, presses his hand to Columbus' head, and pulls it away just as quickly. "Damn, yer still burnin' up."

Sometimes Columbus forgets that Tallahassee had a kid before all of this, that he did this sort of thing. "'M cold," he argues, probably sounding not unlike a kid himself.

"Well, sucks for you, then," Tallahassee says, as he rather unrepentantly pulls a bottle of water from the bag of fresh supplies slung over his shoulders and thoroughly douses Columbus with it. "You're gonna get colder."

Columbus is sputtering out curses, soaked in what feels like ice water, but is, in actuality, more like lukewarm water. When another bottle appears, he is rightly suspicious, but Tallahassee hands him this one, along with a couple of pills and a command to swallow them. He does as told.

"Since ya went hollerin' up a storm and drawing all kinds of attention to this place, we'll have ta find someplace else," the older man says with a sigh, like he'd been planning on staying here a while. "So come on. There's another empty house up the block that's still mostly usable."

Columbus, still drippy and dizzy, does as told, but this time his ankle is even less forgiving and he promptly ends up back on the floor. "I, ugh, I might've fallen trying to find you last night," he admits, while Tallahassee hauls him upright again. "Sorry?"

The man slings one of Columbus' arms over his shoulders, supporting the weight that his busted ankle can't take. "What am I gonna do with you?"

"Take me with you, hopefully," he mumbles, perhaps in his delirium, as he leans against Tallahassee's side.

"Ya really musta been out of it, if ya thought I'd really left ya here." Tallahassee's looking down at him again, his eyes softer than usual. "I'm not that easy ta get rid of, you know. Not even a swarm of those walking corpses could stop me."

"What happened to 'don't get attached?" Columbus mumbles.

Tallahassee breathes out a heavy sigh, full of things like Buck and the girls and whoever else he lost before all of this, and says, "Fuck that," and, "Didn't work, anyway."

Columbus agrees, it really didn't, and that's another rule crossed off his list. He revels in the warmth radiating off of Tallahassee when he holds a little tighter, but that stirs another thought, a worrisome one of, "What if you get sick, too?"

"I'm fine," he insists, as if being a badass is enough to keep the germs away, "Bearin' in mind the fact that you managed to catch one helluva cold when we haven't seen a living person in a week, I'd say there's not much we could do if I did, 'cept hope those pills work. But, I haven't gotten it yet, so I think we're alright." If near constant close-quarters haven't infected him, nothing will, he suspects. "Now, come on," he says, as they take a few test steps, "You'll be better in no time."

"Yeah," Columbus nods, feeling a little spark of hope in what is a mostly hopeless world. He dares a bigger step and staggers into Tallahassee's side, off balance.

"And hopefully just a little bit less attached," Tallahassee jokes, as they finally figure out the best way to walk like this, hobbling out of that house. They stop every few feet to deal with an incoming zombie or dodge an obstacle that would threaten the careful balance they've found and continue on their way like it should be, together.


End file.
